Hemingway Adventure

Series: Hemingway Adventure
Chapter: Kalispell, Montana
Country/sea: USA
Place: Kalispell, Montana
Book page no: 243

Kalispell, Montana

Horned limousine at Kalispell airport.

Kalispell, Montana is two hundred and seventy miles, as the eagle flies, to the north west of Bozeman, just to the far side of the Flathead Mountains, where the Rockies spread towards the Canadian border.

I’m waiting at the airport for my transport to a dude ranch at Marion, fifty miles to the west, and wondering if living in these great open spaces doesn’t do something to the mind, when I hear the sound of a cow drawing up at the Arrivals area. For those who might not have heard a cow drawing up at an Arrivals area, I can only describe it as a long, defiant moo, ending on a strangely falsetto note. This may be because it doesn’t in fact emanate from a cow, but from a long black Lincoln limousine with a pair of horns on the front which is heading straight for me. I try to appear unconcerned, but the limousine moos again, more confidently this time, as if the damn thing has recognised me. And it has. A window slides down and a wide-brimmed black hat appears, and beneath it a woman’s head which enquires politely if I’m Michael Palin.

Which is how I get to meet Ellen, better half of Leo; together they run the Hargrave Guest and Cattle Ranch - my home for the next couple of days.

Ellen is around my age, I would think, with a merry twinkle in the eye and a line in Oklahoma!- style skirts, cotton blouses and high-heeled boots, which is not an affectation for she comes from a family of nine children brought up in rural Kansas. One of her sisters, a slim blonde called Mary-Beth, is visiting and has been roped in to drive the limousine and pull the moo control every now and then.